This study is concerned with the examination of rural spatial structure from the viewpoint of the relationships among settlements, and its goal is to suggest what should be taken into account in the process of planning rural living environments. This paper follows the previous one which argued the existence of key settlements and examined the characteristics of their centrality. The data from the same study areas were used.
In this study a concept of social 'distance' or 'closeness' was introduced to help analyze the social interrelationships among rural settlements and this was defined with the two indices: 1) frequency of residents' social activities, 2) density of social relations. This 'distance' was then analysed by using a cluster analysis resulting in several clusters of settlements with different densities of social relations among each cluster.
Each cluster corresponded to former administrative boundaries which varied in size reflecting the results of administrative reforms at different times. So it can be seen that rural areas can be broken down into several, often overlapping, units. It is also apparent that these clusters were formed around the key settlements described in the previous paper. This fact indicates that a key settlement was developed at each phase of reform. In the study areas, lower-grade key settlements were found in lower-level settlement clusters such as 'ooaza' and 'kyuson', and the higher-grade ones in those of higher-level, that is, towns and larger.
Thus rural areas are comprised of various social units and this has important bearings on the development of agriculture and other industries, and further on the improvement of residents' lives. The planning of key settlements should therefore be carried out taking full account of these social and economic considerations.

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For the purpose of making orderly and continuous use of land, land use planning adapted to the natural conditions of the land must be of prime importance.
In this paper, we discussed a method of estimating natural resources and then, aimed to establish a readjustment method of land use planning in rural areas.
Taking into consideration of natural land unit classification, the Area Suitability Classification System was improved the include the result of estimation of natural resources and to be effective for larger areas with geographical, geological and biological variety.
In the first chapter, we review previous papers which mentioned land use suitability classification in rural areas and we suggest some problems related to the methodology of estimating the functions of open space.
In the second chapter, we mention the detail of Area Suitability Classification System which includes a natural resources estimation process.
In the final chapter, we illustrate the effectiveness of the method with the case study in Chino City in Nagano Prefecture.

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The purpose of this paper is to classify the relationship between land use and natural conditions and to clasify the features of changes of land use in rural areas. The case study was carried out in Chino city, Nagano prefecture.
In order to evaluate the natural conditions, the area was divided into natural land units based on land form and soil type. The natural land units map and the land use map were overlayed and the area of each land use in each natural land unit was measured. The Relation between natural conditions and land use was interpreted by location quotient.
Analysis was carried out at two planning levels. The upper levels intended for the whole area of Chino City, whose area is266km², and the lower is intended for the Tamagawa and Izumino regions in Chino City, whose area is 6.7km². In this study the former level is called “city level”, and the latter is called “village level”.
It became clear by analysing the relationship between natural land units and present land use that here are characteristic relationship between them at each level.
The changes in land use were also analyzed. At the “city level”, the changes of the past 50 years were investigated. 5% of the area of Chino City has changed in 50 years. The land use appears to be stable at the “village level”, the changes from farmland to other land use of the past10 years were investigated. The changes were strongly influenced by natural conditions as well as economic conditions.
From these results it was thought to be necessary in rural land use planning: (1) to grasp the natural conditions corresponding to the planning level, (2) to consider the capacity of the natural land unit as a land use item and the selective extension of land use items as a natural land unit, and (3) to consider the effect of natural conditions on the changes of land use.

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Looking at the planning for agriculture from the perspective of information processing the logical structure can be looked upon as a feedback process of reasoning: reasoning mainly based on data, or reasoning mainly based on hypotheses.
In this paper, I give my own experience in the construction of the logic of the data processing system for a personal computer by means of the above-mentioned reasoning, which we can apply to the analysis of present conditions, regional diagnosis, regional classification, selection of villages that should be included in the Regional Agricultural Promotion Project and so on, using the data of '1980 World Agricultural and Forestry Census'.
This work is in preparation for the utilization of prospective artificial intelligence data processing for the planning of regional agriculture.

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[in Japanese]

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